Current household or domestic blenders or mixers in the market need to deal with different ingredients and recipes and be capable of liquefying, mixing and producing different textures. In most of cases, the performance of the blenders is measured in the final particle size after processing during a certain period of time.
Therefore, the circulation inside the blender jar and the efficiency of the blades has a lot to do with achieving good results. One of the most difficult tasks when processing food in the blender or blender jar is having to process viscous ingredients or recipes, such as smoothies, milkshakes or slushies, because the circulating movement is reduced, and the demand of power and efficiency from the motor and blades is increased. The viscosity of such ingredients also reduces the suction carried by the vortex, and an air pocket can be formed above the blades, causing them to spin without processing nearby food.
To avoid the formation of air pockets and to enhance the circulating movement, it is known to use plungers by which the user can interact in a stirring movement and thus help to explode or remove the air pocket and to reestablish adequate circulating movement.
Further it is known to avoid or remove air pockets and enhance the circulating movement by improving the suction in the vortex, which can be obtained by increasing the speed of the blender blades or by adding more liquid to the mixture.
The aforementioned solutions bring unconformities to the user as in the first case, the user needs to intervene. In the second case, where in most cases rotational speeds of over 20,000 rpm are used, comparatively high noise levels, that are generally difficult to remove, are generated. And the third case the final result could be affected in quality of textures and flavor due to the addition of more liquid.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,217,028 B2 a domestic blender with a tilted blender jar is described, wherein tilting the blender jar is thought to improve mixing and blending results.
Another issue identified on the performance of known domestic blenders for example is the formation of ice bridges below the blender blade during processing frozen items, such as ice cubes. In general this issue relates to the aggregation of particulate matter below the blender blade during operation.
As can readily be seen, there is still need for improving blending or mixing results and vortex generation of domestic blenders.